Ligand Directed NIR-based Theranostic Prodrugs for Prostate Cancer

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Cancer remains one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide. Prostate cancer (PC) is currently the most common male malignancy and remains the leading cause of death. Despite advances in chemotherapy, current strategies still carry severe side effects and offer limited benefit to the patient. Two main reasons behind these limitations include 1) non-specific delivery of anticancer drug to the target tissue and 2) poor diagnosis at an early stage of the disease. Thus, there is an urgent need for a novel and modular theranostic platform to deliver drugs selectively to cancer tissues and simultaneously follow therapeutic efficacy through non-invasive imaging techniques. Herein we propose a DT-diaphorase activated, DUPA guided NIR-based theranostic strategy to deliver anticancer drug selectively to prostate cancer cells while monitoring in real-time drug release and efficacy in vivo. The developing tool is novel and modular, enabling the use of various triggers, drugs and targeting agents. The fluorophore signal is expected to fall in the NIR region (>600 nm) and the scaffold with enable as real-time monitoring of drug release in vivo, as well as the introduction of targeting groups in order to improve the specificity of the theranostic agents towards cancer cells. The development of this technology can provide an invaluable platform that can be easily adapted for the treatment of different cancer types. It is likely that the directness and modularity of this novel approach will have a strong impact in the field of targeted drug-delivery for treating and monitoring in real-time drug effectiveness.